Evenings Upstairs @ Your Library - Going Home to Ireland with Robert Tincher

Going Home to Ireland with Robert Tincher, musician, song collector and cultural historian. Tincher will bring in the St. Patrick’s Day spirit by performing music and singing traditional Celtic songs with guitar, along with such Irish instruments as the Bodhran and Cittern.

His program will feature songs named for places in Ireland, interwoven with his personal travelogue. Every song proclaims the love that Irish people around the world feel for their ancestral home. You will hear some old favorites you’ve known since childhood and learn the stories behind them.

Tincher grew up in Berea, Ky., and was trained in classical piano until his interest was overtaken by Appalachian ballads and by the popular folk music of the 1960s. His first contact with traditional English and Scottish music occurred in 1973 as a university student working overseas, followed by a two-year stint with a Boston music publisher that allowed him to explore the rich Irish music heritage of the Northeast.

Returning home to pursue a graduate degree in anthropology, Tincher made a regional name for himself not only as a performer and a scholar of music but also as a festival and concert producer. He is thought to be the first Kentucky musician to ever play the Irish Bouzouki, and his skill on guitar, Bodhran (Irish hand drum), and Irish-style tenor banjo adds to the authenticity of his performances.

Drawing on Ireland and Scotland’s rich heritage of dance tunes, ballads and slow airs, Tincher captures this music in all of its austere beauty and savage soulfulness. His expressive singing mixes story and song with history and personal experience to take his listeners on a journey across the Atlantic and back to the wellspring of some of America’s most beloved and enduring traditional music.

For more information, visit www.mclib.net or call 270-442-2510, ext. 119.